


Christmas Past

by irrationalgame



Series: Thommy Xmas Prompts [5]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anstruther - Freeform, Dubcon Mention, Jimmy is a needy sub bottom, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Rimming, smut with feelings, tragic backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:55:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27964151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrationalgame/pseuds/irrationalgame
Summary: Jimmy sighed then said; “I don’t hate Christmas per say. I just don’t remember the last time I enjoyed it.”
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent
Series: Thommy Xmas Prompts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031865
Comments: 21
Kudos: 76
Collections: A Very Thomas Barrow Christmas 2020





	Christmas Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hi_im_eff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_im_eff/gifts).



> For prompt 5: Christmas Past - “I don’t remember the last time I enjoyed Christmas.”
> 
> Dedicated to my soul twin Eff - you know why.

Jimmy took the stairs two at a time, his socked feet thumping on the wooden treads - he jumped down the last three and landed on the hallway tiles with an _oof_ before skidding into the living room. It was still dark enough that he needed to light a lamp so he could see what he was doing - a difficult task for a nine year old with hands shaking from excitement. When it was finally lit he turned his attention to the tree. There, under the prettily decorated boughs, was a pile of neatly wrapped gifts - he sifted through them, casting anything without his name on to one side.

Then he found it - a small but heavy parcel with a paper tag that just said _Jimmy_ in his Dad’s swirling hand. He tore off the paper and _yes_ , it was just what he’d wanted; a tin of wooden toy soldiers sporting red-painted coats and tiny muskets. Some were banging colourful drums or waving minute flags - there was even a handful of cavalrymen on miniature horses. Jimmy smiled and unboxed the lot, lining them up along the edge of the rug like they were about to charge down the enemy.

He marched one of the soldiers - _a scout_ \- across the floor and to the enemy territory of the window, pulling back one of the heavy curtains in a way that would undoubtedly make his mother tut at the untidiness, and peered out into the gloom. It was early enough that the gas lamps were still burning, casting little pools of dull orange that barely made a dent in the vast ocean of suffocating blackness. To Jimmy’s utter delight it had snowed overnight - enough for making snowmen and having snowball fights with the boys next door and maybe even tobogganing.

Jimmy grinned - it was absolutely _perfect_.

Maybe next Christmas he’d ask for another set of soldiers painted in blue, so he could have a proper good war.

* * *

  
Jimmy’s Ma was shut up in her room again - flu was the excuse this time, though Jimmy didn’t know if she was actually sick or just crying over his Dad. She was always locked in there for some reason or another. He shivered as he locked up the front door and dumped his worn-out boots in a pile in the hall, then peeled off his socks. His right foot was wet and achingly cold from where his boot had let in the snow - the short December days had grown wintery and Jimmy often came home, chilled to the bone, to a dark house, with no fire in the grate and no dinner on the range. They hadn’t even bothered with a Christmas tree this year, let alone presents.

His Ma hadn’t bothered with anything much since Jimmy’s Dad had gone to the front in a hail of pride and bravery and returned in a casket. Not the work she’d been so proud to be a part of during the war; not her home, which was fast becoming a mess of cobwebs and dusty carpets; and not even her son. It was lucky he was old and savvy enough to feed and dress himself.

There was a letter on the mat, emblazoned with the sort of blocky red writing that could only herald bad news. Likely another overdue bill that they couldn’t afford to pay. Yet.

Jimmy peeled off his jacket despite the chill in the air - it was almost one full size too small now and restricted his arms as he reached for the letter, even with the god-awful job he’d done of trying to let the thing out. He gone to his interview looking thoroughly _Dickensian_ , but it hadn’t mattered - he’d got the job anyway. The lady of the house had popped down to cast her eye over the candidates, as was apparently her way, and Jimmy had given her his cheekiest smile - the one that all the girls (and even a couple of the boys) at school used to go cock-a-hoop over. She’d practically undressed him with her eyes, a lustful grin on her rouged lips. The old butler had just sighed in a long-suffering way and Jimmy had been hired on the spot.

He was to start in the new year as third footman to the Anstruther’s. Maybe by next Christmas he’d have saved enough to buy his Ma a decent gift.

* * *

  
Anstruther’s London house was simultaneously decadent and severe, opulent and cold - as if it had been designed to meet all the latest fads but without any actual care or character put into it. It was more like a museum than a home, and even the enormous gaudy tree in the lobby couldn’t make the place seem cosy.

Jimmy stuffed his cold hands into his pockets and stared at the probably priceless glass baubles. He was overtaken by a desire to rip every one off the tree and throw them on the marbled floor just to see them explode into glittering dust. Of course, he didn’t. He couldn’t afford to be jobless and homeless in the middle of December - with his Ma gone he had nowhere to go except the gutter or the workhouse.

So, instead, he climbed the staircase with leaden feet and sealed himself off in his tiny, bare room. He’d risen to first footman, due to Lady Anstruther’s obsession with him rather than his skill at the job, and thus had been given his own room. He thought he’d enjoy not having to share with the other footmen, but he actually found it rather lonely. His unjust promotion had only given the others more reason to dislike him.

As if they needed any. He was unlikable enough without any help, thank you very much.

He dressed for bed and climbed under the woefully thin covers. The rest of the staff were enjoying a bit of a Christmas do, and he could hear the faint sound of music drifting up from the servant’s hall somewhere below in the bowels of the building. He had no desire to join in the merriment. He had no desire for anything these days, except perhaps to escape Anstruther’s wandering hands.

He pulled the covers up over his head and, embarrassingly, gave over to tears, sobbing as he had when his mother had succumbed to the flu and left him. As he cried himself to sleep, miserable and lonely and pitiful, his only thought was that if he were lucky, by next Christmas he might have saved up enough to get away.

* * *

Jimmy hated Barrow. The man was vile - a letch, just like Anstruther had been - and a bloody _cad_. He’d made Jimmy believe he’d finally found someone who understood him; a friend. A kindred spirit. But, alas, _no_ \- Barrow had turned out like all the rest and had only been interested in Jimmy for _that_.

He didn’t know why he’d been so surprised. It was all he was good for anyway.

And then Barrow had the bloody nerve to write him a contrite-sounding Christmas card, which Jimmy had promptly handed back and told him to stick up his perverted arse.

The way the under-butler’s eyes had shattered like glass - well, he couldn’t think about that. It wasn’t his fault. The bloke deserved everything he got.

Except Barrow was downstairs with the rest of them drinking mulled wine and having a jolly bloody time and Jimmy - Jimmy was alone. Again.

Perhaps _he_ was the one who deserved everything he got. There had to be a reason why the universe saw fit to torture him every bleedin’ day. Maybe it was punishment for his sins.

Jimmy rolled over, shoved his head under the pillow and tried not to think about Barrow’s perfect oilslick-black hair, and his sly smile like a red knife wound, and his eyes like mother-of-pearl buttons - and how just looking at the under-butler made him hot - but not with anger.

It was as if he’d somehow infected Jimmy - like that one stolen kiss had caused a contagion he couldn’t shake and instead of destroying his body, his mind - his whole sense of himself - was bloody wasting away under it.

Maybe, if he was lucky (ha, what was _luck_ eh?) by next Christmas the bloody disgusting lavender bastard would’ve been sacked.

* * *

  
“Jimmy, come here a minute would you?” Thomas said, gesturing for the footman to join him by the piano. Jimmy sauntered over and took the offered cig, letting his fingers brush against the under-butler’s for a moment longer than was necessary just to feel the jolt of excitement in his stomach.

“What is it, Mr Barrow?” he said, leaning back, his elbows propped on the piano. He knew it made him look attractive, to tip his head back slightly and expose his throat, his hair a golden cascade behind him.

Thomas turned to him, a smirk on his indecently red lips, and Jimmy saw how his smile faltered and how his breath caught as his eyes darted down to Jimmy’s collar and back to his upturned face. He disguised it all with a long pull on his cig of course, then smugly produced a folded sheet of paper from inside his jacket. “It’s for you,” he said, too lightly.

Jimmy snapped to attention, instantly fascinated. Everything Thomas did was fascinating but this - he was giving Jimmy something, a gift maybe, and the footman’s heart seemed to think this was a good enough reason to start smashing itself roughly against his ribcage.

Jimmy took the proffered paper and knew exactly what it was the instant his fingers touched it. The folded leaf had that same crinkly, delicate texture he’d only even felt in sheet music and the pages of the Bible, and it was bloody unlikely Thomas of all people would be handing him a _Bible passage_. He unfolded it and lo, it was indeed a sheet of music - one of Jimmy’s new favourite songs; _Downhearted Blues_ by Bessie Smith.

“Oh! Mr Barrow!” Jimmy exclaimed, genuinely chuffed, “Where did you get this? I couldn’t find it anywhere when I looked in York.”

Thomas took a drag on his smoke. “Took a detour last week when Carson sent me to Leeds. It’s not a Christmas present, I know how much you _hate_ Christmas. I just saw it and thought of you,” he said casually, as if he obviously hadn’t gone to some effort to find it. “It’s a bit more maudlin than your usual sort of thing but...” Thomas trailed off.

“No you did right Mr Barrow,” Jimmy smiled and let his shoulder press into Thomas’s affectionately, “thank you.” Then; “I don’t hate Christmas _per se_. I just don’t remember the last time I enjoyed it.” Jimmy fiddled with his cigarette - sharing parts of himself always made him feel awkward but with Thomas - he pushed past his discomfort because he actually wanted to. He wanted to let Thomas know him like no-one else ever had.

That still didn’t make it easy though.

Thomas hesitated then asked; “What about when you were a lad?”

The memory of the big tree in his living room and the toy soldiers slipped into his mind unbidden and he smiled. “I uh, I remember being so excited one year to get these rubbish little wooden soldiers - y’know, the redcoats with the muskets an’ all that nonsense. Seems so stupid now.”

“Not at all,” Thomas said. “It’s a pity we lose that...” he paused and gestured with his cig, looking for the word, “...naïve sense of wonder at life. That joy.” He sighed; “Gets beaten out of you sooner or later.”

Jimmy nodded and stared at the opposite wall so he didn’t have to look at Thomas as he said; “Yeah, the war and me parents both goin’ did it for me. And then Anstruther’s weren’t exactly a jolly old time. Not for me, at any rate.”

Thomas gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry for that. And I...I can understand it a little. I haven’t exactly enjoyed Christmas these past few years. What with the war and the flu and...y’know, last year and all,” he said, neatly avoiding bringing up The Incident and what had followed.

Jimmy gave Thomas what he hoped was a contrite sort of smile - his face always seemed to betray him when it mattered. “I’m sorry for that.”

“Not as sorry as I am,” Thomas replied, then, to change the subject; “Maybe this Christmas will be better though?”

Jimmy looked at the sheet music with a smile, “It already is better, Mr Barrow.”

* * *

Jimmy fell back onto Thomas’s bed with a groan. “Bloody Christmas is going to be the end of me.” He snapped his braces off and undid his collar with a theatrical sigh.

“It’s not been that bad,” Thomas said. He eased off Jimmy’s shoes for him and tucked them in their usual spot under the bed. “And tomorrow is easy, we only have to do breakfast then the day is ours.”

“It’s alright for you, you haven’t had Ivy hanging off you for a week trying to trick you into going under the blasted mistletoe,” Jimmy exclaimed. Thomas kissed his way up Jimmy’s calf and thigh and the footman gave a little sigh of pleasure.

“Well that’s your own fault for flirting all the time,” he said, his chin resting on Jimmy’s knee.

“Jealous?”

“Of Ivy? As if. I’m the one who gets to take you to bed, not her,” Thomas gave a tight-lipped smile. “But I err, I don’t exactly enjoy it though.”

Jimmy blinked. “What?”

“Oh! Not taking you to bed!” Thomas exclaimed and scrambled to sit beside Jimmy on the cot. “I enjoy that _immensely_ , as well you know. I meant I don’t like it when you flirt with her. It er, well...” he shrugged and lit a cigarette, which was his way of avoiding saying anything more on the subject.

Jimmy sat up and kissed the side of Thomas’s head. “Then I’ll stop.”

“You don’t even know you’re doing it.”

“Then I’ll _try_ to stop. And we can have a code. If I accidentally flirt you can say...oh... _pickled eggs_ and I’ll know I’m doing it again.”

Thomas sucked on his cig, his cheeks hollowed in a way that invoked a very pleasant memory from the previous evening. “Picked eggs? How am I supposed to drop that into conversation? I’ll sound like an idiot.”

“What’s new?” Jimmy teased and Thomas thumped him on the arm.

“Alright, fine, I’ll say your breath smells like picked eggs or your face has a striking resemblance to a pickled egg or you walk like you’ve got a picked egg shoved..”

Thomas was interrupted by Jimmy tackling him and they rolled around together for a moment, laughing, as Thomas tried not to burn himself with his cig.

“Say _pickled egg_ once more and I’ll pickle your bloody _eggs_ ,” Jimmy smirked, pinning Thomas on his back.

“Alright,” Thomas relented, and shoved the cig between his lips again. Then, around his fag; “Do you want your present now? I’d rather do it when it’s just the two of us than with the rest tomorrow.”

Jimmy frowned; “I thought we agreed no gifts?”

Thomas shook his head. “You said no gifts. I chose to ignore you.”

“Good, because I got you one too,” Jimmy poked his tongue out and Thomas rolled his eyes. “I’ll go and get it.” He ran down to his room, extracted the present from its hiding place, and hurried back to Thomas. When he got back the under-butler was sitting on the bed, a bottle of red wine breathing on his nightstand, a small but beautifully wrapped box beside him.

Jimmy practically dived on to the cot. “Wine? Are you trying to seduce me?”

“As if I need booze to get you on your back,” Thomas smirked.

Jimmy scowled and chucked the gift at Thomas, who caught it neatly. “Merry Christmas, you arse.”

Thomas smiled, a beautiful, genuine smile and tore off the wrapping. “Jimmy,” he gasped as he held up the delicate silver watch chain - the leather and silver fob at the end was engraved with a swirling _TB_. “You - Jimmy, this is too much!”

“Not by half,” Jimmy grinned, and Thomas kissed him soundly.

Thomas immediately fetched his watch and started about unthreading his old watch chain and attaching the new one, as Jimmy ripped the foiled paper from his present.

Within was a tin box - worn from age and use, and oddly familiar. Jimmy ran his fingertips over the scratched lid then popped it open to reveal a miniature army of play-worn wooden soldiers, wearing red-painted coats and carrying muskets. Jimmy picked up one of the soldiers and turned it over and over in his hands. He had to blink back tears - not just at the memory of that one, perfect Christmas, but that Thomas had remembered their conversation last year and had gone to such an effort.

Jimmy scrubbed a hand over his face, his cheeks wet despite his best efforts to avoid crying. The mattress dipped as Thomas sat beside him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“Alright, love?” Thomas asked gently.

Jimmy nodded. “Sometimes, when I think I couldn’t love you no more than what I already do, you just ‘ave to go an’ prove me wrong, dontcha?”

Thomas kissed the shell of his ear and then his jaw. “I do love to prove you wrong.”

Jimmy huffed a laugh and turned to catch Thomas’s lips with his own. They kissed, softly at first, but before long Thomas’s tongue was dipping into Jimmy’s mouth and Jimmy had carefully placed his beloved box of soldiers aside so he might clamber into Thomas’s lap unhindered.

“I need you, Thomas,” he breathed, “make love to me, please.”

Thomas gave a low moan, picked Jimmy up by his hips and threw him down onto the bed. Jimmy was hard in a second - as was always the case when Thomas took charge and manhandled him so. He supposed it should make him feel less of a man or some such tripe, and when the under-butler had first lifted Jimmy off the ground and pushed him against a wall, he’d been torn between punching him and coming in his underwear.

Thankfully Thomas had been a patient and loving tutor in all aspects of lovemaking - and the way he selflessly gave Jimmy pleasure with a sort of reverent devotion made Jimmy’s heart grow bigger with love until he wondered how his body could contain it. Love had trumped his doubts and he’d learned to ignore the kind of thoughts that the old, lonely and painfully miserable Jimmy might have latched upon.

Before long they were naked and rutting up against each other, the old springs of the tiny cot groaning beneath them. They’d probably fall through the blasted thing one day.

“Will you?” Jimmy said and Thomas nodded - by now he knew what Jimmy wanted without the footman even having to ask.

Thomas kissed his way down Jimmy’s body, deliberately ignoring his aching cock, and went lower, between his legs. Jimmy hitched his knees up to give him better access; any embarrassment he had once felt at what Thomas was about to do had vanished like a morning’s frost under the warm sun the first time the under-butler had pushed his tongue into Jimmy and found that place within him that turned him into a keening mess in seconds.

“Jimmy,” Thomas moaned against him, then unceremoniously buried his tongue in Jimmy’s arse.

If Jimmy had either a shred of self-control or pride left he’d have been mortified at the noises he made - he had to actually shove his own fist into his mouth to stop his wanton whining alerting the whole men’s corridor that something untoward was happening in the under-butler’s room. As it was he had neither, and thus rocked his hips up and down until Thomas used a forearm to press him into the bed.

“Behave,” Thomas growled and grazed Jimmy’s inner thigh with just enough teeth to make Jimmy shiver uncontrollably.

“I want...” Jimmy started.

“You always want something,” Thomas replied, grinning up at Jimmy from between his thighs.

“Good job you like givin’ it me then, ain’t it?”

“Now now,” Thomas tsk’ed, “manners.”

“Please Thomas,” Jimmy begged, “ _please_.”

Thomas reached for the half-empty pot of petrol jelly from the bureau and Jimmy let himself stare at his ruffled hair, and his pink cheeks and the way he bit his bottom lip in concentration as he slicked his own cock.

Thomas was always handsome: in his livery, straight-backed and perfectly turned out; in his day suit and bowler, dapper enough to make every head turn when he entered a room; in his pyjamas first thing in the morning, grumpy and yawning and rubbing his eyes; when he was asleep, his mouth slack and face soft. But if Jimmy had to pick a favourite it would be like this; naked, a flush running down his chest, his eyes dark with want.

Thomas moaned as he eased himself into Jimmy and the footman felt as he always did - like he’d been walking around his whole life with a small but crucial part missing, so he didn’t quite run as smoothly as he was supposed to. Like a watch missing a tiny lever or gear, destined to forever be losing time no matter how well you wound it. But with Thomas, when they were together like this, Jimmy felt like he was finally more than the sum of his parts.

Thomas had always known how to fix up broken watches.

After a moment Thomas moved his hips, gently at first then faster and harder until he was slamming into Jimmy - he’d have been sent backwards across the bed if Thomas wasn’t holding his hips tightly enough to bruise.

“ _Thomas_ ,” Jimmy whined, his hands grasping at any part of him he could reach. Thomas bent forward and kissed him sloppily, then sucked and nipped at Jimmy’s neck the way he knew Jimmy loved, marking him. The under-butler took hold of Jimmy’s straining cock and started to stroke him, in time with his thrusts, and Jimmy felt his release begin to build, as if someone was pulling a cord within him and forcing all his muscles to tighten at once.

“Thomas, yes, more, please _please_ ,” Jimmy begged and Thomas obliged; deeper, harder. “Thomas I’m _yours_ , take me, make me yours.”

“You’re mine, _ah_ , mine Jimmy,” Thomas replied, his voice rough. “You’re mine and no one else will ever touch you, not ever again.”

Jimmy arched up off the bed, desperately close to coming. “Thomas, please, I can’t!”

Thomas sped up his rhythm, one hand roughly pulling Jimmy into him with each thrust, the other pumping Jimmy’s erection. He fixed Jimmy with a dark look and said; “Now be a good boy and come for me, eh?”

And Jimmy did, in a thick, hot spurt that dripped from Thomas’s soft middle and pooled on his own stomach.

After, once Thomas had followed suit and finished, filling Jimmy with a warm wetness and collapsing over him in a heaving heap, the footman looked over at the mantle clock and saw it had ticked over into Christmas Day. He was hit with the enormity of everything - of how every Christmas for almost ten years had been awful and miserable. Until he let himself love Thomas and then - then it had been transformed into this - something unrecognisably wonderful.

He couldn’t help but give over to tears.

“Jimmy, Jimmy?” Thomas said, pulling away to look at Jimmy, his face alarmed, “My love, whatever is the matter?”

Jimmy wrapped his arms around Thomas’s neck and sobbed into his shoulder as the under-butler _shh’d_ and soothed and repeated like a prayer; “It’s alright my love, I’ve got you, it’s alright.”

Eventually the tears subsided and Jimmy managed to say; “I’m just - I love you so much. And I’m - I’m happy. Thomas I’m so _happy_ and I’ve been unhappy for so long. I didn’t think I could ever feel like this.”

Thomas leaned up on one elbow to look at Jimmy, his own cheeks now wet, and said; “I’ll make you happy for the rest of our days, if you’ll let me.”

“Mr Barrow,” Jimmy sniffed, half-joking, “is that a proposal?” His stomach knotted with nerves as the words left his lips, but he needn’t have worried; Thomas smiled more broadly than Jimmy had ever seen and kissed him again, soft and sweet and full of emotion.

“Jimmy,” he said, “my darling boy, if the world were a better place and we could marry, I’d have already done it. As it is, all I can give you is my heart and my promise that it’s Thomas and Jimmy, contra mundum. Forever.”

And, happily, it was.


End file.
